Welcome to Write Wrong. A podcast that talks about writing from the point of view of someone who’s been doing it wrong for far too long. I’m Cortney Hamilton, and this is episode 002. Today, I’ll be talking about: 

 

Revising: Or writing a novel and then destroying it in order to make it good. 

 

But first a practical tip. If you get nothing else from this podcast you’ll at least get this:

 

If you’re putting on a shirt in the semi-dark and you don’t know which is the front, look for the waist tag on the inside of the lower half. If it’s on the left side, there’s a good chance you can put it on, and it will be correct. If you do end up putting it on backward, leave it. When someone points it out, just look them up and down and say: “Ok, Boomer,” and walk away, shaking your head. This works for any age, by the way, even if you are a boomer. 

 

 

Moving on: 

 

Revision is everything. Revision makes or breaks a novel. Revision, my dear friends, is a hell-bitch god that preys on your doubt and exploits your insecurities like a bully eighth-grader who snorts Fun-Dips and follows it with a Mountain Dew chaser. And yet, it is necessary if one wants to produce fiction that’s worth someone else’s time.  

 

So sit back or forward. Adjust your earbud while nodding to convince your Significant Other that you’re just turning off the podcast to listen to them, and give me twenty minutes to talk revision. 

 

On my last episode, I spoke about how I got an agent with my first novel and then lost that agent with my second novel. So, now that I am agentless once again, I’m revising my first novel to reflect what some of the editors had said about the story. 

 

But before I do this, I have to ask myself a question. The one question we should all ask ourselves whether we’re at the beginning of writing a novel, revising a story, or even just thinking of buying another shot of tequila: 

 

Is this really a good idea? 

 

So there are hundreds of reasons not to do this. The very first reason and likely the only one I need to think about is: The book is used goods. It’s already been submitted and rejected by all the big publishers. It’s played out. It’s been shopped around. It’s a joke already heard. A meal already eaten. It’s cats playing piano on Youtube. It’s posting even more photos of your Pekinese on Instagram. We get it. He’s cute. You love him. But he’s still looks like a Goodwill rug reassembled in a laboratory and brought to life by lightning.

 

The theory behind not resubmitting is that once your agent has submitted your novel to editors, then it’s been seen. And unless you do some major rework on it or they give you specific things to change, then resubmitting it will just yield the same rejections, but with an added p.s. that says ‘Stop stalking me.’

 

So why am I revising? 

 

Because I believe in the novel. 

 

Now, this might be akin to saying I believe that the coronavirus was a collaboration between Democrats and Bill Gates to save the environment by reducing the population of the world, namely Mitch McConnell. But, and this is where I must really assess my beliefs, I really think this novel is decent. It’s not great. I don’t know if I have greatness in me. But I definitely have ‘good enough’ in me. And it’s good enough to be published. That, I believe. And I believe it’s strong enough to give it one more try through a publisher who refuses to give me the time of day without an agent. 

 

And I say all this because I want to encourage you. Because if you’re contemplating working on a novel, whether before you write it, or after you’ve written it, or even while writing your first draft, then believing in the project despite all criticism is very important because it'll get you through those times when no one believes in you. Which can be most of them.

 

This novel, for me, is like a puzzle. It’s an escape room. It’s my own version of The House of Davinci. If you don’t know that reference, check my show notes and thank me later. And even if the novel goes nowhere, I’ll be satisfied, even proud. Because it’s not about getting credit and accolades and maybe even a few coins, preferably of the ‘bit’ variety. It’s about the feeling of writing something and seeing it to the end, knowing that I put all I had into a project and can give no more. The feeling of looking at my novel and saying, “Yes! I wrote that. It was the best I could do at the time. And it’s not bad. Why it’s even good enough.” 

 

Also, it helped that I was armed with a bit of feedback from editors. Namely, the belief that my protagonist needed to be more relatable-slash-likable. Curiously, two words you only hear applied to fictional characters and politicians.  

 

I hate the words likable and relatable, by the way. So I reinterpreted those words to be less annoying. And what I came up with was that readers needed to feel more for my protagonist if they were going to go on the journey with her. 

 

And so, armed with that information, I sat down at my computer, I opened up the document that I hadn’t touched in three years and I did exactly what I should not have done. 

 

I tweaked it. 

 

I started to reread it from page one. Adding a little empathy here. A bit of humility there. I had the core of the story already in place, and I was afraid to change too much. I didn’t want to lose the thread. So, I did a little touch up. And I kept touching and touching and touching and— 

the funny thing about touching up, it’s like moving a cat by poking it. Sure, you need to move it off your keyboard so you can write, but you also need to keep your hands from becoming bloody tatters.  

 

But I kept tweaking until I got to the end. And the end was a hard reality for me, a truth-teller that said, “Your tweaking has sucked! The characters haven’t earned their change. You’re trying to do the least amount of work for the most amount of gain. And you’re failing.” 

 

Endings can be jerks like that. 

 

So, I needed to put in more work in order to build up to that change that needed to happen in my protagonist. 

 

 And I couldn’t just tweak my way there. 

 

I had to step back from the story to gain perspective. And to help me, I looked at four things: 

 

1. I wrote a topics/theme list. This definitely helped me to step back and reinforce what it was I was trying to say, which is essentially theme. Which is challenging because I just said the word ‘theme,’ and I’m guessing you’re already wondering about your next binge on Netflix. 

 

But, here’s what I actually did: I wrote down every topic that I could think of that’s in my book. Friendships, love, mother/daughter relationships, trust, anger, wanting to be accepted and liked, etc. And then I took what I thought was most important and wrote opinions on them. A stance that I took, about, say, trust. 

 

For example: “In order to trust others, a person must get caught at lying over and over again until they lose everything and have to start all over.” Now, you might disagree with that. Which is great because it means you’ll likely be more engaged with the story. But to support my theme, I needed to show examples of my character going through that lesson.  

And I made sure what I wanted to say was congruent with what I’d written--doing this help me get more specific than what I had. It also helped to keep me on track throughout the story. 

  

 

2.  I summarized each chapter. What happens. Who wants what and if they get it or not, which helped me to see if each chapter was doing what it needed in order to contribute to the whole. And was doing it in a logical and believable way. 

 

Now, both of these tactics helped me to step back and get some distance from the story, which allowed me to look at some deeper conditions the story demanded like:   

 

3.  Needs and wants of my protagonist. I put this as one of the most important aspects of my story. What does my protagonist want, and what does she need? And, ideally, I want them to be in opposition. Why? Because it’s interesting.

 

For example, I might want to eat a pint of Ben&Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk, but instead, I need to get my butt off the couch and exercise if I don’t want to have love-handles and meet a hairy-armed nurse at the end of a defibrillator machine. See? Want: ice cream. Need: fewer hairy arms in my life. And the fight that I go through to overcome the want and allow for the need—or not—is the story. 

 

Needs and wants are important and ideally they should be in every chapter. But at the very least, my character should want something overall in the story, and by the end, he should realize that what he wants is worth sacrificing for what he needs if he’s going to ultimately get what he wants, which, basically, is to be happy. That’s the only thing our characters ever really want.   

 

In the draft of the novel that I gave to my agent, my main character had a want and need. But much like my decision to manscape my chest hair that one time, I wasn’t giving it the attention that it deserved. Because when I stepped back this time to assess the situation, I realized it wasn’t exactly the right want and need. It rang hollow.  

 

And by looking at it again, I saw that there was a need behind the need I’d given her. And that need wasn’t apparent throughout the book. And it needed to be. By stepping back and reexamining wants and needs, I was able to add depth and meaning to my character’s journey. But it did take some time, and I found those deeper needs through relationships.

 

4. Relationships, or the thing that’s entertaining in a Disney film, but gets you eaten by a tiger in reality.  

 

Relationships exposed how flimsy my character’s need was. Because relationships, as you probably know from talking to your mother, often embody all the things you don’t want to face in your life, inside a person you love, who either constantly pesters you to face them, or, is the perfect role model of what happens when you don’t. 

 

And relationships, like needs and wants, are most dynamic when they are in opposition to each other. That doesn’t mean you have to have characters who are always fighting. Or who are enemies. But it does mean that each character has to have their own wants and needs and, hopefully, those will sometimes be in opposition to your main character’s wants and needs. That is one of the core components for a relationship. Especially if two people like each other. Or if they don’t but have to be in the same room. And even if they’re all on the same team, going after the same goal, it doesn’t necessarily mean their personalities groove with each other. That they don’t make each other mad, or make poor decisions, or form alliances. 

 

Think of it like going on a family vacation. You all want to have fun and relax. But your idea of relaxing might be for the kids to “shut their dirty little Kool-Aid stained faces for five freakin’ minutes!” While their idea of relaxing might be to smear margarine all over their bodies like it's sunscreen and use the iPad as a light-up frisbee. 

 

So what happened in my novel was that I realized I was hinging too much of the story on plot. My characters go here. Then go here. They get this. Whatever. It can get tedious if the relationships aren’t evolving.   

 

So I delved deeper into the relationships between my characters. How do they affect the protagonist? Where do they begin, and how are they different at the end? And I was beginning to see a pattern in my scenes. Everything was conflict. My main character was fighting everyone all the time. 

 

Now, in the draft that got me an agent, I’d chosen a perfectly credible want for my protagonist and gave her an opposing need that was critical to her happiness. But looking at it again, I found out—through the relationships—that the story wasn’t about her only giving up what she wanted, in the end, to get what she needed. It was about how the relationships were illuminating that need to her over and over again throughout the whole novel. And how she fought against that, which forced the evolution in her character. 

 

And the conclusion I came to was that relationships were the most important aspect of a story. Plot is fun, and what gets me interested in writing anything. But relationships are the hard part and, I believe, what keeps a reader interested. If plot is, say, going to Michael Jackson’s house. Relationships are the age you are when you go. It’s gonna be a whole different story if you're seven than if you’re seventy.  

 

Looking at my wants/needs through the relationships, in particular, helped me go deeper and realize that what she needed was more ingrained into her being. And I can check to see if I’m on the right track because, if I’m not..my ending will rat me out. Because the ending is where all your hard work pays off. The ending will prove your story to be authentic. 

 

And there are many kinds of endings. Here are a few: 

 

-The kind of ending where you finish, and she does not

-The kind of ending when you say, "Can I get a to-go box?"

-The ending where someone hands you an ice cream cone, you take your first lick, and it falls to the ground where your Pekinese promptly laps it up.

-Or the kind of ending where you pull the ripcord, keep free-falling, and your final words are: “Screw you, Groupon!” 

 

My point being that yes, I ended my novel, but have I finished it?

 

Now, as I mentioned, I already wrote an ending. I liked the ending. I didn’t want to change the ending because it worked plot-wise and because I’d already reworked the ending in the sixteen different drafts I wrote before I even polished the last damn version. But, as I mentioned, when I initially started tweaking the scenes, I got to the end, and it told me that I was trying to pack too much change into one scene. 

 

Because the end is where the relationships, and needs and wants come to a gratifying conclusion, and it makes or breaks the story. I mean, the cocktails may be captivating, the appetizers exquisite, but if the main course is a pile of dog poo with a flake of truffle on it, you can be damn sure you’re getting a one-star yelp review. And endings are hard to get right. That’s why Jared, my co-worker who wanted me to help write his great idea for a fantasy novel will never get it written because he doesn’t have an ending, he barely has a middle, and  “You know, Jared, just shut up about your idea, and put this garlic bread in a to-go box.”

  

I’d like to make the distinction that when I’m talking about the ending, I’m really talking about the climax. And I think storytellers use that word for a reason, because like sex if you don’t nail your climax, then it doesn’t matter how great the foreplay was. In fact, if you have great foreplay without a good climax, it can be even more frustrating. And that’s why there’s so much pressure on endings.  

 

Because the plot may have concluded, but if the relationships haven’t grown through the story and helped your character to earn the change they need then a reader won’t be happy. 

 

So the great thing is that if I do my due diligence in my revision--looking at needs and wants of my protagonist and how the relationships push and pull at those needs and wants--then by the time I get to the end there’s an expectation that the character will change. Or, if they don’t, they actively decide not to change.  

 

So the thing I chose for my character to ultimately want in her life—to be famous for her art—is what drives her through each chapter. And the climax is where she gets it or not. But it’s also about what she does to try and get it. In my novel, she thinks she has to be strong and forceful and even mean to get what she wants. So the entire story is her trying different ways of doing that: bullying people, being callous and rude because to her it means she’s fighting for what she wants. But what she needs is to realize that being vulnerable and accepting herself for who she is, even without fame, is also a strength, and one she absolutely needs if she’s going to be happy in life. 

 

So my ending has to put her in a position where she gives up, not just her desire to be famous, but also her way of going about it. To realize being emotionally vulnerable is just as strong as being forceful. And plot can’t teach her that. But relationship can.   

 

So when I first knew my ending sucked and I had to fix it, I made the same mistake I told you about when revising the rest of the novel. 

I tweaked. I fiddled. I tinkered. Tried changing their dialogue. Tried changing what the characters talked about as well as their attitude and approach. But what I had to do was go back and explore what my main two characters wanted from each other. What they were denying each other. How did that affect them? Not just in the story but in their histories. 

 

And I’m not big on doing giant character histories. I try to hit the pertinent stuff. Find their wounds, how those wounds happened to them, and how it affects now. But sometimes I gloss over stuff. Most of the time, actually. You can probably tell by listening to this podcast. 

And endings punish me for it. Sometimes, I’ll choose something in a character’s history and write the whole novel, and it’ll be wrong. Not wrong, but, you know, not the best choice. Again, I refer you to exhibit: manscaping.  

 

So, where am I right now with it? Well, I think I’ve hit a happy balance. But I’m still figuring it out. And I’ve written an ending that I think works. I’m letting it sit for a few days before going back to it. And what I’ve realized is that relationships don’t always have to harmonize by the end. But my main character can still learn the lessons from them. 

 

In fact, what I’m realizing is that not getting along with her mother is exactly what my protagonist would do even while allowing herself to be vulnerable around her. Because it’s actually the only thing that will allow her to let go and be happy. 

 

I’ve been wanting a nice wrap up to the climax, something that puts all the conflicts into harmony. But at this point, I don’t think that’s what needs to happen. As I said, I’m letting it sit before I go back and see what’s going to work. But it feels right right now.   

 

This process has been a pain in the butt. What I thought would take me a month/month and a half to do has now taken me five to six months, and that’s just to get the plot and relationships in place. It doesn’t include revising each scene for its potential, let alone looking at grammar and punctuation. Then submitting it to beta readers and then revising it after that. It’s a slog. But I’m gonna figure this out. And once I’m done with it, it will be great, and complete, and I’ll never speak of it again.  

 

 

So, here’s a few takeaways I got out of this: 

 

1. Revision can suck. But the first thing I need to do before jumping into it and tweak is to step back and look at the big picture. 

 

2. Endings are hard. This may sound obvious, but it’s important to acknowledge the challenges this brings so that we give them the attention they deserve. And know that the attention has to start at the very beginning of the story. 

 

3. Don’t just tinker around. Really look into your character relationships and make sure they’re speaking to needs and wants of the protagonist throughout. That they help guide her toward what she needs. Plot is what makes me excited. But Relationships are what moves readers to feel. And if your reader isn’t feeling for the characters, then you’ll get a bunch of publisher rejections like me. 

 

4. Delve into character’s needs and wants and make sure their want in the end is overcome by their need. It means so much more for a character to give up everything she wants in order to acquire something deeper that she needs in order to be happy or not.

 

5. Believe in your novel. This also might sound like an obvious one. But if you have passion for it, then keep going. I mean, I’m probably beating a dead horse by revising at this stage. But maybe I’ll end up with an exquisite delicacy of tenderized Kobe horse loin. 

Okay, that’s kind of gross, but you get my point. You’ll need the determination to persevere. Because as much as I love to write, and I do, I also hate to write. And that’s okay. As long as I believe that what I’m doing is worth it for me. Not for an agent. Not for a reader. Not for an editor. But for me. And so far, it is. 

 

And that’s it for this one. If you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review on iTunes because I’ve been told it lets others know I’m here. If you didn’t enjoy this episode, I get it, but I want to remind you that not everyone likes beer or exercise at first either, but, after a bit of time and practice, it grows on you. 

 

So give me one more episode, and if you won’t, I appreciate you listening anyway. Also, you can go to my website Cortwrites.com. That’s C-O-R-T writes.com and check out the show notes and transcript. 

 

As a wise guide once told me: You don’t have to know your ending when you begin, but you should at least stop when you get there. 

 

Or maybe that was a fortune cookie. 

 

And I’ll leave you with a quote. This one is from Rebecca Solnit, who was named one of the top 25 Visionaries changing the world. She says: 

 

“Nothing is ever so good that it can’t stand a little revision, and nothing is ever so impossible and broken down that a try at fixing it is out of the question.” 

 

Thank you, Rebecca. I feel better. 

 

So write. Write, my friends. Write like you’re saving a baby from a burning car. Because that baby is your novel and that car is time.